New Study on Americans' Expectations of the Net

radicalsubversiv writes "A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports on Americans' expectations about finding information on the Internet. The (unsurprising) results reveal that large portions of the public go to the net first for many kinds of information. '16 percent of the nonusers say they would turn to the Internet first the next time they need health care and government information.' AP story summarizing the results; and the actual report in PDF format."

Comments

What's the story?

[anarchima]

I don't really see the importance of this story. This is pretty much a reality in the "new age", but of course it's nice to have a study to back it up. Interesting development to see that non-users are turning to the Internet for help, though. I often find that when students at my school are doing research for a project, essay, etc., teachers tell them to look in books first because they know how difficult it can be to find relevant information. This just shows how important it is to have good, thorough searching tools like Google.

Re:What's the story?

[MrResistor]

This story is important to publishers of books and magazines, and also the writers and journalists who provide their content, who are no longer the primary source of information for most people. They assume that the rest of us care for the same reason /.ers think everyone else cares that there's a new security patch for IE: because it's terribly important to them.

When it comes down to it though, it really is a fundamental shift in the way Americans access information, and there are good reasons for it. There is a lot of information out there that simply can't be found otherwise. Remember the 1-800-DENTIST commercials from a few years back? It was a number you could call to get a recomendation for a dentist and they supposedly would supply you with all sorts of information about that dentist. I don't remember a similar service for doctors, or mechanics, so where would you go to find that information?

The reason teachers still recommend books, though, has very little to do with finding relevant information, which generally isn't difficult in a school research paper scenario. The difficulty is in finding reliable information, which the internet really isn't that good at. At least with books it's reasonable to assume that there has been some review and verification of the information provided, and that just isn't true on the net.

Re:What's the story?

[Mac Degger]

Relevance is still quite an important issue. Here's a good example why:

This was a number of years ago, for the final project in my first year of mechanical engineering. I was tasked to find some sheets of rubber, for the skirt (the bottom bit which keeps the air under the thing) of the one-man hovercraft we had to build. I had been quite active on bbs's in the day, but was quite the www-newby. So I innocently type in 'rubber' in my search engine of choice (no google at the time)...wow. I never knew how...inventive...people could be when they had access to some bits of rubber. The closest relevant link I found was to a Durex (condom) site.

Now of course it might be a bit easier, with more and more manufacturors online, but I bet it's still not as easy as I once thought it should be.

Re:What's the story?

[jo42]

The story is: Americans have their heads up their fat arses and don't know any better.

Not mentioned in the article...

[Kierthos]

...while 100% of those Americans asked said they expect to find pr0n on the Internet, even when they're not looking for it.

Kierthos

bad information

[Anonymous Coward]

whenever i search for some useful inf/instructions, i am always dismayed to find my browser seems to take over, & pretty soon i'm funnelled(tm) to some sort of credit card inf. input screen. i now know more about shopping baskets, than anything i've "searched" for.

i expect that's not going to change right away.

I use the net for....

[Chicane-UK]

All kinds of stuff that perhaps 4 or 5 years ago, wouldn't have been available :

Phone numbers, cinema listings, used car adverts, buying just about anything you can imagine, weather forecast, reading the daily news (well, its more than daily - most sites are updating all the time), and keeping in regular contact with friends and family.

Yes, there are a lot of bad things about the internet, but there have been so many advances in recent years.. it has most definately become a tool that I could not do without!

Re:I use the net for....

[Chasing Amy]

> Yes, there are a lot of bad things about the internet

The only bad thing I see about the Internet is spam. Aside from that, the rest is stuff we can live with even if we don't all necessarily like it... In fact, every other "bad" thing about the Internet which is usually cited is something that's easily dealt with on the client side through filters, firewalls, etc. Spam and the bandwidth it wastes is the only 100% bad thing I can think of about the net.

Re:I use the net for....

[Kajakske]

Uh euh ...

SPAM is also easily dealt with on the client side.
The fact that it uses up bandwith remains ofcourse, but the same goes for popups, banner ads, ...

Re:I use the net for....

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the dumbest post ever.

4 - 5 years ago "Phone numbers, cinema listings, used car adverts, buying just about anything you can imagine, weather forecast, reading the daily news (well, its more than daily - most sites are updating all the time), and keeping in regular contact with friends and family." ???????

1- Phone books?
2- Newspapers?
3- Newspapers, specialized mags?
4- Stores?
5- Television? Radio? Newspapers?
6- Motherfucking TELEPHONE???

Fuck, where were you living 5 years ago? Bin Laden's cave?

Re:I use the net for....

[Storm Damage]

I think he meant those things weren't available on the net. It made sense to me.

bad information

[Anonymous Coward]

robbIE is now "suggesting" that you buy visual studio from those stock markup FraUDs over at the kingdumb of fud.. see what i mean?

It's on the Internet...

[archetypeone]

so it must be true.

This can be good... or not

[The Tyro]

Going to the net for general news and commentary is a great use for the internet... far better than sitting on your couch, stuffing your face, passively taking in what Tom or Peter tells you is news.

On the other hand, I sometimes take care of ppl (I work in the healthcare field) who come to see me "armed" with info off the internet; some of it wildly inaccurate.

The internet can be a good place to look for healthcare info, provided you stick to the major sites. Hitting Joe Schmoe's Geocities page about how all the evil doctors tried to kill him treating his cancer... then he found this miracle herb/crystal treatment... Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

I hate to be paternalistic and say "trust your doctor," but who else is going to help you sort the wheat from the chaff? For instance, take the PDR. Few physicians I know regularly use it; it's simply a list of drug-company inserts, where they list every possible side effect of every possible medicine. Blah... most people will not have side effects, and if they do, it'll be a common one. I've had people go online and bring in a PDR printout to support their contention that "this new drug is causing all my problems! See? All my symptoms are listed right here! Talk about an uphill battle to keep them on a good medication...

Mixed blessing to be sure, but access to information is important. I'd honestly say, that even in my field, the good of the net outweighs the bad.

Re:This can be good... or not

[WPIDalamar]

I'm sure part of the problem is commercials for prescription drugs! What the hell. I see commercial for some drug (claritan, propecia, whatever) ... go to their website that diagnoses me as having X disorder, and then suggests I go see my doctor to get this medication (because no others work as well).

Usually, even if the doctor disagrees they have no choice but to prescribe since the patient will just change primary care physicians to one who will play ball. It just sucks.

Re:This can be good... or not

[RealBeanDip]

"I hate to be paternalistic and say "trust your doctor," but who else is going to help you sort the wheat from the chaff? For instance, take the PDR. Few physicians I know regularly use it; it's simply a list of drug-company inserts, where they list every possible side effect of every possible medicine. Blah... most people will not have side effects, and if they do, it'll be a common one. I've had people go online and bring in a PDR printout to support their contention that "this new drug is causing all my problems! See? All my symptoms are listed right here! Talk about an uphill battle to keep them on a good medication..."

Yeah, but...

There IS a reason those side-effects are listed. The fact is, these people may in fact be correct!

I think it's encouraging that more people are become better educated about health care and medicine in general. My personal belief is a lot of drugs are over prescribed (antibiotics and ridilin (sp?) in particular). I've come to that conclusion through personal observation and, ta da, research on the internet.

So my response to your statement above is this; Good for them. Stay on your toes, answer the questions with solid facts and you'll have nothing to worry about.

Re:This can be good... or not

[Oculus Habent]

I think in addition to the side effects, perhaps there should be percentages of those affected. This could be a bad thing, but it would also give doctors a tool against patients who say things like "See, it says rare cases of bleeding eye sockets, and after inspecting my eyes for nine hours yesterday, they started bleeding!"

Re:This can be good... or not

[The Tyro]

Boy, do I wish it were that easy. It often doesn't matter how solid my facts are; it's a question of who you believe. If you look at any list of side effects, you'll find many with 2%, 3% incidence. To have 3 or 4 rare side effects at one time, assuming they are unrelated to one another? If you work out the probability, it's pretty low.

I'm not anyone's jailer... I can't force anyone to take anything. I do my best to give accurate information, and try to persuade people to do the right thing for themselves... but the final call is always theirs. In a way that somewhat absolves me of responsibility for the outcome, but it still pains me to see people hurt themselves.

You are correct that some drugs are over-prescribed. Antibiotics are overprescribed, and Ritalin is sometimes as well (though to be fair, if you have real ADHD, it's a wonder drug... the difference is like night and day). The problem comes in the form of doctor shopping. Do you risk your long-time relationship with a patient by outright refusal to try them on a drug? They might go shopping for another doctor who will prescribe it anyway... and then you've lost that incredibly valuable long-term relationship you've built with the patient. So the argument goes: If they are going to get the drug anyway, why don't YOU prescribe it, so you can monitor for complications, and potentially provide better care than a total stranger?

Tough choices... and sometimes driven by direct-to-patient drug company advertising.

Don't even get me started on the advertising issue...

Re:This can be good... or not

[dhovis]

Antibiotics are overprescribed, and Ritalin is sometimes as well (though to be fair, if you have real ADHD, it's a wonder drug... the difference is like night and day)

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, though I don't have the hyperactivity aspect. I've done some reading up and NIH has determined that about 7% of the US population has ADHD, whereas only about 2% is recieving treatment for it. One common misconception is that you outgrow it, more than half of people with ADHD will continue to have symptoms into adulthood.

The problem comes from a diagnosis standpoint. The only kids who get diganosed routinely are the ones with severe hyperactivity. If you don't have the hyperactivity, and are merely inattentive, diagnosis is rare. I got to graduate school and was only diagnosed after I stopped taking classes and couldn't fall back on my steel trap of a brain to get me good grades on tests. I've had the symptoms for a long time, but I never knew that was what ADHD was.

Many people slip through the cracks. A lot of them end up using drugs (esp. Cocaine, which has similar effects to Ritalin). ADHD also appears to have a heredetary component, so children of ADHD parents are likely to have ADHD. Because ADHD adults often have trouble holding down jobs, their kids often do not grow up in the best home situations, and their problems get blamed on that.

Speaking of wonder drugs, Eli Lilly just got Strattera approved. It is the first non-stimulant drug for ADHD that appears to work just as well as Ritalin. If it really does work, Ritalin will be wiped off the map, because it is such a pain in the ass to get prescriptions (Ritalin is considered a controlled substance, so you can't get refills, you need to get a new prescription every month).

Re:This can be good... or not

[ealar dlanvuli]

Ritalin is like crack to come off though, thats a major drawback to it.

When I droped it in 7th grade it took me almost 3 months to get over withdrawl.

Re:This can be good... or not

[SacredNaCl]

The question of who to believe is very central to medications. For instance, do you trust the drug company funded study on the incidence of that particular drugs side effects?

In many cases the actual incidence of those side effects isn't 2 in 100 but 20 in 100. You tend to find that out when independant researchers go after the same data. Many times drug companies studies will be designed in such a way as to minimize the appearence and reporting of side effects. Incidence of withdrawal in many common SSRI drugs is a case in point. One study looked at a drug that had such a long half life that it would still be present in the body by the time the study ended. They noted that they didn't have a high incidence of withdrawal effects. Of course not, the drug was still in the body!

So yes you can find some information on the net, but often you wont find anything more useful than what is included in the package insert. Once in awhile though, you find a lot of people who have the same problem or sets of problems with a drug and it's up to you to try to make sense of it.

I do wish that the FDA's incidence reporting data was better organized and more freely available to the public. (Anonymized of course)

Even in that data set you have to realize that it only reports a small fraction of the side effects actually experienced.

Then there is the lawsuit factor. Most major sides will not report anything other than the drug company funded official version of facts for fear of being sued.

There is just a ton of room for improvement. It would be nice if drugs were evaluated against one another by someone to see which one really does preform better. Ironicly, some of the HMO's and some countries with nationalized health care are finally beginning to do this work. Without it, all you know is the drug (*maybe) performed better than nothing and that was enough to get approval for it from the FDA.

(I say "maybe" because a handful of drugs that got approved did not beat placebo in the majority of trials. However, the FDA will allow you to submit only the ones that show it and throw out the data from the ones that do not.)

Re:This can be good... or not

[herbierobinson]

Want a good example, try searching Google for what kind of diet one should go on for diabetes.

I can't be sure what kind of example it is, but you will surely find a ton of conflicting information...

Expectations Real thing

[Kajakske]

In my surrounding, I noticed most people that are not used with using a PC and the interent expect alot from the net, but when they actually use it, they get somewhat demotivated. This biggest problem for non techies is actually finding what you are looking for.

Personally I think this is a matter of habit. if you use alot of searchengines to get to the stuff you want, then you get to know how they work and thus will be able to use them much better.

My mum still doesn't get it.

[caluml]

She has heard of this thing called the internet, but she doesn't appreciate it.

She asked me what I did for work, so I explained. "But you're not making anything, not doing anything", she said.
I'm working with information, I told her.
But that's not real, she said.
If people don't understand the value of information, well. Mind you, if there was a nuclear war, we'd all forget about computers pretty quickly and start trying to grow enough food to survive, find un-contaminated water, and somewhere to stay safe until the nuclear winter was over.

What's my point? I don't know. Maybe I've been insightful. Maybe not. I'll tell my Mum I talked about her on Slashdot though - that'll confuse her... :)

Re:My mum still doesn't get it.

[mikewas]

In case of nuclear war information becomes more important, though the type of information needed changes. How to prevent contamination & decontaminate food, water, air and people. Later you'd neeed to know what plants to grow, when to plant, how to fertalize naturally, hunting & gathering skills, food preservation. Information will become truly invaluable because it'll be the diffference between life & death.

Restoring communications & computer networks would go a long way towards helping the survivors. We'd need to share this information, since it is spread thinly across most of modern society. Envision a slashdot cobbled together from bits & pieces of remaining infrastructure, with folks trading information about tilling the soil, reloading ammo, making black powder, traps & snares, skinning game, tanning hides?

A study released Sunday

[caluml]

A study released Sunday...?

I didn't realise Sunday was being held by study.
(Brits will get it.)

Mod away. There are more important things in life than karma. Hey, that makes a good sig...

Re: A study released Sunday

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not British. I understood it. You should give Americans more credit. Actually, don't bother. Most Americans *are* uneducated idiots. ;-)

Re: A study released Sunday

[caluml]

Lol :)
You didn't say you were American though.. :)
And our schooling system isn't that great anyway. We're just like you - except we're 25 years behind. Give it another 20 years, and we'll have kids killing each other in school. ;(

Of Course

[Gnaythan1]

The reason I go to a website for news, is because I can not only get the story, but in the comments, I get peoples opinion. Shortly followed by other peoples counter-opinion, better facts, cross-pollination of ideas, and quick debunking feedback on certain types of propoganda.

Of course this requires a little more work on my part, actually picking through information and choosing what is good and what is crap, rather than having it spoon fed.

I actually laugh at what the AP wire and most newspapers call news. I pay little attention unless there is a "comments" link I can sift underneath. I often test a website by checking for and if neccessary posting a contrary comment, just to see if it sticks around. If the comment is harshly negative to the majority of comments already posted, but is not deleted, that website has validity, and I will be more apt to trust it.

Duh

[nukey56]

Information.. on the internet? Who would have thought...

YOU FAIL IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure your mom sucks cock everywhere. Why would she limit herself to Soviet Russia? And don't try refuting it; you know it's true.

Re:Like..

[Zan Lynx]

I was just going to moderate this as Offtopic, but I decided to comment instead. What does a "demo" have to do with what people expect to find on the Internet? Most people, even heavy Internet users, don't know what a "demo" is, so they are hardly going to expect to find one.

Also, it would have been a far better comment if the author had decided to include some detail about the link. A plain link just gives me the impression that the author is pasting links to this "demo" into as many places as possible. How is this any better than spam?

Internet Hypochondria

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

You can scare yourself shitless searching for health care information on the Internet. The Onion have run a few stories on this.

Apparently, it's also a pain in the ass for doctors, because patients walk into their surgery having diagnosed themselves on Google and demand a particular treatment.

No need to teach granny to suck eggs, but as someone said above; it's on the Internet - so it has to be true.

Health Care info on the Internet is mostly bad news, because it is almost impossible to distinguish sound peer reviewed medical services from Dr. Nick Riviera's "I'll do any operation $199.99".

If you feel ill or find a lump anywhere, go see a real doctor.

Re:Internet Hypochondria

[Anonymous Coward]

"go see a real doctor."

You shouldn't give out medical advice if you're not a doctor!

Re:Internet Hypochondria

[bmalia]

I've recently purchased a house... and this reminds me of a conversation I had with my realtor. I used realtor.com pretty heavily, because it had pretty much all of the houses the realtor's system (i forget what they call it, but that system that is the official realtor network of houses that only realtors can get in). I'd have picked out which houses i wanted to goto and had mapquest maps printed out so i could find them. My realtor basically just scheduled the showings and unlocked the door so i could get in. She'd follow me to get to the next house on the list of showings, because i had the maps and knew where I was going. We were talking about how the internet really changes the realtors job in that aspect and how while its probably a good thing for realtor's. (less work.. just go with it!) But, doctor's really don't care much for google's second opinion. My wife is really guilty of having a pain and then searching for all of the dreadful diseases she could have. I can just imagine all the patients saying, "I have tinycockitus. I know, because the internet told me so.

Re:Internet Hypochondria

[persist1]

The Realtors' system is called MLS, for Multiple Listing Service.

As for self-diagnosis... having the presence of mind to look up my symptoms on Google may well have saved me several hundred dollars last spring, mostly by keeping me out of a state of panic.

Kidney stones are THAT painful.

Re:Internet Hypochondria

[fendel]

it is almost impossible to distinguish sound peer reviewed medical services from Dr. Nick Riviera's "I'll do any operation $199.99"...

Nonsense. You just stick to the big medical sites like WebMD and Medscape, or keep an eye out for titles like "New England Journal of Medicine." If, on the other hand, you're on a site that sells quack cures or links to conspiracy-theorist or UFO sites, get outta there. If you find something interesting and you're not sure it's reliable, hit Google and look for corroboration from a trustworthy site.

I'm one of those patients who shows up armed with internet printouts, 'cept I show up with GOOD ones. I often go in with a diagnosis in mind, and you know something--I'm usually right. I'm fortunate to have doctors who are open-minded enough to hear me out. Without my internet research, I would still be undertreated or untreated for a couple of chronic but manageable disorders (hypothyroidism, acid reflux).

I use library and telephone analogies

[MyNameIsFred]

I had the same problem with my in-laws. At first they didn't understand the internet and were leary. I used a couple of analogies... URLs are just phone numbers, except easier to remember. They could understand this. They're old enough to remember when telephone numbers were "Klondike 567." Then I showed them how it was just like a library in your home. It was tax time, and my father-in-law needed a tax form. A few clicks and ta-da. I even located an out of print book my mother-in-law wanted.

Although as someone who pushes paper all day, I have to agree with your Mum. Sometimes I wish I drove a bulldozer. At least at the end of the day I could point to something I had accomplished.

OTOH, you could ask your Mum if a being a lawyer is a real job, all they do is push information. Or how about an accountant...

Where are the alternatives?

[psplay]

CNN? USA Today? the LA Times?

I must admit after spending 18 months in LA. I HAD to use news.bbc.co.uk for news, and cnet.com and epinions.com for reviews of products/prices.

The alternatives were horrendous, CNN was just so sensationalist that it made ITN look serious. Ditto the majority of news services. Anyway for sheer convenience and control of what I am reading, the Internet has an easy win.

As for shopping,shop staff were generally useless (except at Fry's, bless 'em), newspaper advertising never gave enough details. Magazines only reviewed new products, not the end of line stock that is so attractively priced in the stores.

Finally, erm, having no friends over there didn't help either.

Re:Where are the alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN/ABC/MSNBC/CNBC/CBS/NBC are all nothing more than conservative mouthpieces for the Bush Administration. They might as well be branches of the government. They, for all practical purposes, Al Jazeera for the USA.

Re:Where are the alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC is just biased liberal British journalists. They're no better than CNN or PBS when it comes to slanted news. Try something impartial like Fox News next time.

The other 84 percent??

[DamienMcKenna]

"16 percent of the nonusers say they would turn to the Internet first the next time..".

So 16% would use the net for healthcare and government information. That still means 84% would NOT. So why is this being promoted as a victory for the Internet over alternative communications methods?

I read this in the news recently

[tenjah]

This is a very funny piece of investigative journalism people.
Americans annoyed by "all this international shit" on the internet
This is the article that I thing the original poster meant to link to.

Re:I read this in the news recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! It's OUR internet!

"I can see where it's important if we're, like, beating some country in the Olympics or bombing them or, ideally, both," Grisham added.

"Jesus, no wonder those guys lost the war and had to give Hong Kong back to Canada."

"I mean, that's why the Internet is called America Online, right? It's supposed to be about America."

It can be helpful though....

[Lokatana]

I had an issue with my daughter when she was 3 months old, and as part of the doctor's investigation, they found she had an inverted chromosome which ended up having nothing to do with her problem.

The amazing thing is, the geneticist couldn't tell me anything about this particular inversion, as neither she or any of her colleagues had ever seen it before.

I used the internet to search various databases and papers, and came up with a single paper that had been written in Europe a few years back that studied a family that had the very same inversion. I was the one who brought this paper to the geneticist's attention (rather than the other way around), after which we were able to confidently set aside the genetic findings as a red herring. This was a case of the patient knowing more than the doctor!!!

While I agree with the spirit of this posting, I believe my story shows that there are no absolutes here. When used intellectually, given the right inputs, it is a very valuable tool!

-Lokatana

Information can build fortunes

[mangu]

About 200 years ago, the Rotschild family built its fortune in Europe based on exclusive access to information. The five brothers each had a bank in a major capital and they used pigeons to exchange information among themselves. There is worth, not only in information alone, but also on how quick one can get that information.

Re:Information can build fortunes

[caluml]

Nowadays, it's kind of expected that access to information should be nigh on instant. I dare say there are instances when fortunes have been won and lost due to a mail server being heavily loaded, and an email taking 1 hour to make it's way over the wires, but with current technology, we've pretty much built up the expectation that it's instant. And if it isn't, people want to know why now.

The horse raced past the barn fell.

[mangu]

That's what linguists call "garden path" sentences, they suggest a wrong parsing until one reads past a certain word, then one must do complete turn-around to get the correct parsing.

In other news....

[Dachannien]

98% of Internet users report that they prefer to ask their tech support questions on message boards instead of Reading The Fucking Manual.

Internet dying

[RalphSlate]

I have no precise facts to back this up, but I believe that the internet is slowly contracting -- dying -- because the amount of available information is shrinking. I don't think this is a case of me having the "when I was young, the snow was up to my waist" syndrome either.

I find that when I search for information on topics, I get mostly links to sites to buy products. Or links to sites that don't work anymore. I might get one or two good links, but not often.

For example, I wanted information on police scanners last week. That sounds like a common topic for people to publish information on the internet, right?

A google search brought me, in the top 10 results:

• 2 links to APBNews.com, a site which has been defunct for a while (I think since 2001). Those were the top 2 "relevant" links.
• A couple of local newspaper sites that link to their area police broadcasts.
• A couple of places where I could buy scanners. Note, most of these places were selling for full MSRP, so even the merchant links don't really help, since if I buy from them I'll pay more than a store.
• One or two amateurish sites devoted to scanning, but with stale information. Some of hese sites offered information if you purchased it from them for $10-20. I'd be better off buying a book.

Now from some of these sites, I was able to piece together some information on the topic, mostly by uusing some information from the merchant sites, and some from the amateur sites, but I was expecting to find a couple of "semi-pro" resources devoted to the topic, a place where I could have most of my questions answered.

This isn't the first time I've experienced this. I search for information on how to remodel my house, but I find that there really is little out there anymore -- just a bunch of small merchant sites, often spammed so that the top 10 search results all redirect to the same merchant.

I believe this is happening because there is little incentive to create fresh, updated content on the internet anymore. Sure, you'll get people creating a website and maybe spending a weekend updating it, but it's really not like the old days, when you could get information on any subject, no matter how obscure, updated daily or even weekly.

I have a feeling that the internet's days as a font of information may be running out, because there is no way to run a quality, high-traffic website for free forever. It may be better than any other source of information, but I believe that soon, people will be heading back to libraries and bookstores for their information, because it just won't be there on the internet. What a shame!

Re:Internet dying

[Grahf666]

I have a feeling this has something to do with the fact that the economy is tanking right now. Maybe in a few years, when people have enough money to pay for bandwidth bills for their mom-and-pop website, and when companies aren't going out of business or scaling back left and right, better information will return to the net.

Internet vs. Doctors that refuse to RTFM?

[ediron2]

I say the internet makes an excellent source of a cheap 2nd opinion.

For instance, take the PDR. Few physicians I know regularly use it; it's simply a list of drug-company inserts, where they list every possible side effect of every possible...

A few weeks after my doc put me on Imuran, I started having the Technicolor Yawns ~30 minutes after each pill. When I asked if it could the meds, I was told "No, it's not the med, but perhaps you should try taking it just before bedtime". Distrustful bastard that I am, I checked the PDR and learned that a small percentage of Imuran recipients will develop a reaction after a few weeks that makes them talk to ralph about his buick after every dose. After that, they'll upchuck if they ever take even a single dose.

Imagine several nights of waking up to bolt and bargle . I'm not a lawsuit sort of person, but I hate retching even more than lawyers. In fact, callin' home the dinosaurs late at night because someone else is too proud/stupid to RTFM makes me want to sue them personally for incompetence in a nice sympathetic Texas court.

Which Providers? Certainly not "the Internet".

[markk]

I find this study pretty misleading, and based on a "broadcast" model of the online media. This is equating the "internet" with broadcasting. Would anyone say - 60% of people turn to the telephone for health information?

Online services are not like TV where there is (even with cable) a very limited number of choices for a topic. It would be interesting to see where people actually go for information - I suspect in the US that it is a very limited number of places for the vast majority of info. This isn't bad on its face, probably inevitable, but inquiry into exactly where people go and who controls those places should really be an ongoing study more interesting than this one.

Too much reliance

[rbolkey]

About three years ago I was stranded in an airport. I knew some people in the area that could've helped me out, but I couldn't recall their phone number.

So, I then went to the information desk in search of an internet connection I could use to find their phone number. The desk didn't have access available.

A few moments of silence passed, and the lady asked me if a phone book would do.

(Kicker to the story, my friends number was busy because they were using the phone line for AOL).

I post on Slashdot for a living

[Anonymous Coward]

For a while my parents didn't understand. "But you're not making anything, not doing anything!" they would say. Sheesh.

Then I showed them all my karma, and of course they changed their tune real quick! Nowadays every time I post a "5, Insightful" my mom prints it out and sticks it on the fridge with a magnet. Then we have a cake with a big "5" candle on it to celebrate.

My dad says if I keep it up, I might get a Slashdot account with a low UID off of Ebay for my birthday. I was hoping to get one for Christmas! Explaining the karma cap to old people isn't easy. My dad insists it's a form of socialism.

Virgins nut_ie!

[salientpoints]

16 percent of the nonusers say they would turn to the Internet first the next time they need health care and government information.

And in the same vein: 21 percent of geeks turn to slashdot to understand America's foreign policy.

oh yeah--and to celebrate their virginity :P

I expect...

[rirugrat]

that /. provides a universal forum of new ideas from a variety of intelligent individuals who post well-thought out comments and arguments both pro and con.

Of course, just like my pregnant wife...I'm still expecting...

Chris

Expectations?

[mbogosian]

It seems like the average American's expections of the Internet can be summed up as, "I don't care. I just want the fucking thing to work. I don't want to have to do anything."

Re:Internet dying-A quarter for your fountain.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a feeling that the internet's days as a font of information may be running out, because there is no way to run a quality, high-traffic website for free forever. It may be better than any other source of information, but I believe that soon, people will be heading back to libraries and bookstores for their information, because it just won't be there on the internet. What a shame!"

A couple things. One on todays internet part of the problem in getting a good answer is asking a good question.

Two most of the good information was never on the internet to begin with. So if one started with libraries to begin with there's nothing to "head back" to.

Three a lot of information is locked up so to speak. Never free to begin with. You got the money and suddenly you have information coming out of your ears.

If one's expectation of the internet is as a free fountain of all human knowledge. Then that's the expectation that never was.

No more free content?

[Pranjal]

I wonder how many people will still use the internet if all the professional content on the internet went paid one fine day.

Last Post!

[alpg]

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being
true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the
mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What
are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers
change.
-- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...